Uh-oh. The newly appointed head of a prominent company did something, six years ago, to signal his support for traditional marriage. Somebody call the thought police!

On Monday, MSNBC.com called attention to this horror in an article titled “Mozilla Under Fire for New CEO’s Anti-Gay Past.” The new CEO in question is Brendan Eich, who was Mozilla’s chief technology officer for nine years before the company promoted him last week. MSNBC writer Emma Margolin explained Eich’s “anti-gay past” in the article’s third paragraph:

Though Eich’s professional background could color anyone impressed... his personal background has one, glaring, black mark for a company committed to the principle of equality: Six years ago, Eich donated $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, California’s now-defunct ban on same-sex marriage.

So a campaign donation -- for a ballot initiative nonetheless-- made six years ago qualifies as a “glaring black mark” on Eich’s personal background? This smells like the Chick-fil-A controversy from two years ago, when president and COO Dan Cathy came under fire for his support of traditional marriage.

Mozilla is not a company that discriminates against homosexuals. They put out a statement last week saying that they provide “the same level of benefits and advantages to domestic partners as we do to married couples across the United States, even in states where it is not mandated.” Mozilla then published a separate blog post affirming the company’s support for LGBT equality, and Eich took to his personal website to declare his commitment to equal treatment of LGBT individuals at Mozilla.

Margolin acknowledged these things in her article, but she also linked to a petition started by gay rights activists that calls on Eich to, in Margolin’s words, “publicly reverse his anti-gay stance, resign, or be replaced.”

As icing on the cake, the article ended with a poll asking readers, “Will you stop using Mozilla’s Firefox browser?”

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